The richest man in the world, libertarian entrepreneur Elon Musk, made the promise on the evening of December 2 to his 120 million subscribers: he would reveal “what really happened” with the deletion on Twitter of an article on the son of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, who had scandalized the Republican camp during the 2020 campaign. These supposed revelations made the news on the social network widely during the weekend.
What exactly are “Twitter files”?
The “Twitter files” are a set of excerpts from internal Twitter correspondence, published on the social network by American journalist Matt Taibbi. The name “Twitter files” (Twitter records) was created by Elon Musk himself. Mr. Taibbi does not specify how he obtained these documents, but there is little doubt that they were transmitted to him by Elon Musk, who had promised to make public internal Twitter discussions on a number of files.
Published on December 3, the first part of the “Twitter files” focuses on how Twitter blocked the distribution of an article by the conservative tabloid New York Post in October 2020, in the middle of the American election campaign, devoted to documents presented as coming from a laptop computer belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden. the New York Post had at the time published excerpts from emails suggesting that Hunter Biden benefited from his father’s political connections to do business in Ukraine. Photos with sexual connotations or showing Hunter Biden using drugs had also been posted online and presented as coming from the same computer.
The rest of the American press had treated these documents with great caution. The computer would have been entrusted by Hunter Biden to a computer store for repair, then would have landed in the hands of a lawyer for Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer; Mr. Giuliani would then have transmitted the computer to Steve Bannon, the ex-adviser of Donald Trump. This incredible circuit gave rise to strong fears that the files could have been manipulated, at least in part.
At the time, Twitter like Facebook had blocked or limited the distribution of the article from New York Post, fearing that it could be a manipulation, possibly orchestrated by the Russian intelligence services. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed that his teams had been alerted, shortly before, by the FBI, of possible Russian manipulation attempts to come, without specific mention of this story.
At the time, the major American social networks feared that the scenario of 2016 would be repeated, when they had allowed various conspiracy theories to proliferate on their platforms, some of which were based on emails stolen by the Russian intelligence services. to the National Committee of the Democratic Party.
What do we learn that we didn’t know before?
Few things: the extracts from documents published by Mr. Taibbi have the main interest of illustrating the internal debates at Twitter on this file, and the questions of part of the management team who wonder if the blocking of the article of New York Post is a good idea. The published documents do not contain any material on the merits of the Hunter Biden dossier.
Many Trumpist sites and influencers have also amplified and distorted the content of these emails to exaggerate their scope, as if the platform’s embarrassment in this case was new. Faced with criticism from Republican commentators, the company had nevertheless backtrack forty-eight hours after its original decision, and unblocked the account of the New York Post fifteen days later. Jack Dorsey, former president of Twitter, had already recognized in March 2021 that the automated deletion of articles from the New York Post had been “a total mistake”.
Elon Musk claimed that the “Twitter files” showed that the company had knowingly violated the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech and broadly prohibits the government from censoring or banning opinions. He sees in the fact that Joe Biden’s campaign team has called for the removal of several tweets a ” evidence “ of these violations, but this is not the case.
On the one hand, at the time of these exchanges, Joe Biden is not yet president. It is therefore not a government request, but that of an individual. On the other hand, there is nothing illegal about Joe Biden’s team requesting the removal of certain posts – which upon examination are found to be tweets containing pictures of Hunter Biden’s penis. nor again. In all countries where Twitter operates, “points of contact” exist between the campaign teams and the social network. Whatever one thinks of the political aspect of the Hunter Biden dossier, the non-consensual dissemination of images of a sexual nature is prohibited by the rules of Twitter.
Mr. Taibbi asserts moreover that the two main American political parties, Republican and Democrat, had access to a direct channel to request the removal of messages, but that this system largely favored the Democrats. He provides no evidence for this assertion. On the other hand, if Twitter did indeed delete messages at the request of the White House – at the time led by Donald Trump – the question of a possible violation of the First Amendment could arise, but Mr. Taibbi does not give no such example.
How these “Twitter Files” were they welcomed?
The publication of these documents was greeted with jubilation by the ardent supporters of Donald Trump, for the most part convinced that the 42e American president had been the victim of a plot that prevented his re-election in 2020. They are interpreted as proof of great collusion between the tech giants, the institutional media and the Democratic Party.
Donald Trump, on the social network he founded after being kicked out of Twitter in early 2021, Truth Social, denounced “massive and widespread fraud and deception” involving the Democratic Party and the “big tech companies”. The loser of the last elections suggested the “termination of all rules, regulations and legal articles, even those of the Constitution” so that his re-election is recognized, or a new ballot organized.
Among Trump’s opponents, these Twitter files appear on the contrary as a wet firecracker, since they provide no information on the merits of the Hunter Biden affair, whereas this one is the subject of a federal investigation in the United States. Nor do they reveal any new information about Twitter moderation, known and decried for its often illegible, arbitrary and inconsistent nature, except that it illustrates the disagreements and embarrassment that reigned within the teams.
For the newspaper Wired, these Twitter Files above all announce the thorny question of moderation since the takeover of the social network by Elon Musk, who decided to personally and actively promote almost absolute freedom of expression. He thus chose to unblock the accounts of Donald Trump, the main contributor to the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin, as well as the conspiratorial and anti-Semitic rapper Kanye West. Before promptly reblocking the latter, who had just glorified Hitler.